


Nothing is Here for Tears

by canolacrush



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (in the context of this fic), Angst and Porn, Body Hair, Chest Hair, Consensual Sex, Dubiously Consensual Haircuts, Facial Hair, Grooming, Hair, Hair Kink, Hair Washing, Haircuts, I can't believe there's a tag for 'non-consensual haircuts', I have been informed that Non-Consensual Haircuts is slightly inaccurate, Love & Spite, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Non-Consensual Haircuts, Post-Reichenbach, Reunion Sex, Sherlock's Hair, but also Consensual Haircuts, in which John goes Delilah on Sherlock's Samson curls, ok that's enough tags, therefore I will add to the Rapunzel-long collection of hair tags, which are not mutually exclusive, why are there so many hair tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 16:52:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canolacrush/pseuds/canolacrush
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John was consumed by a sudden, overwhelming hatred for that hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing is Here for Tears

**Author's Note:**

> Once, a commenter named Shoedog left the following comment on a fic of mine: "Ha! John's the Delilah, seductively twirling a pair of scissors, w/eyes on Sherlock's Sampson curls."
> 
> And I went, "oh damn, now I want fic of that," and then wrote fic of that (but apparently not before I read Milton's _Samson Agonistes_ , listened to Saint-Saëns's opera version of the story, and read the Biblical account and several Wikipedia articles on the subject first. FML, why can't I do anything simple?).

“And what if Love, which thou interpret'st hate,

The jealousie of Love, powerful of sway

In human hearts, nor less in mine towards thee,

Caus'd what I did?”

            —Dalila, from John Milton’s _Samson Agonistes_ (1671)

 

 

It wasn’t Sherlock.

 

There was a living, breathing man in John’s doorway, and he wasn’t Sherlock.  He wasn’t the elegant and immaculate man John used to call his flatmate.  He wasn’t the straight-backed, masterly force of nature that commanded the attention of everyone in the room.  He wasn’t even dead.  He was a man who’d been buffeted by the winds of strange, foreign storms, worn down over all this time into an eroded fragment of the monument he once was.  He called himself Sherlock.

 

John slammed the door in his face.  Then, after a breath, opened it once more and let him in.

 

This man called Sherlock entered the room as though afraid of what was in it, eyes darting from side to side in a way John would consider familiar if not for the fact that they weren’t Sherlock’s eyes.  Sherlock’s eyes never had a red, sleepless stain in his sclera, no matter how many days he went without sleep.  This man called Sherlock started to explain things rapidly, which would have been familiar except for the fact that Sherlock never _rambled_ , and he certainly never stumbled over his words, ever.  John briefly wondered if someone had disinterred Sherlock’s corpse and decided to wear his skin.

 

“John, please say something,” the man said, in a voice so like Sherlock’s that John’s leg nearly gave out.

 

“You’re filthy,” John said, surprising them both.  “What rubbish skips have you been sleeping in?”

 

Sherlock’s—the man called Sherlock’s—eyebrows lifted, and his posture straightened into a semblance of what it used to be.  They said nothing.  They stared at each other, eyes wide in desperate disbelief.

 

John twitched, then turned into his kitchen, reflexively switching on the kettle and stuffing bread into the toaster.  Sherlock followed him at a distance, like a hesitant shadow.  When the tea was made and the toast slathered in jam, John pushed the plate and a mug towards the man and demanded, “Eat.”

 

Sherlock paused, a huge rest of motion, then consumed the entirety of what was set before him, crunching, gulping, slurping, licking, inhaling.  For a second it felt like Sherlock again, even though Sherlock never crashed into food as violently as the man before him did, never seemed to need anything so avidly as this Sherlock did.

 

When the plate was clean and the mug drained, John nodded towards the ensuite bath and said, “Take a shower.  You look like you could use one.  Use whatever I have in there.”

 

Sherlock simply stared at him, liquid glazing his eyes.  The barest upward twitch of his lips was followed by a jerk of his head.  For the first time, John noticed just how long Sherlock’s hair had become—straggly, greasy curls brushed against his shoulder and fell into his eyes.  Messy, dark hairs coated his jaw and upper lip.

 

“And shave, for Christsakes,” John added, just as Sherlock had started to move towards the bath.  “There’s a new razor in the cabinet.  We’re cutting your hair when you get out.”

 

Sherlock crinkled his eyes in a smile and murmured, “All right.”  He disappeared into the bath.  Water roared through the pipes.

 

John took a deep breath and let it out.  He fetched yesterday’s newspaper from the coffee table and unfolded sections of it in a large square on the floor.  He grabbed a dining chair and placed it in the middle.  He found the scissors in a drawer in the kitchen, lightly thumbed the blades, and decided they were still sharp.

 

He sat in the chair and waited.

 

When, eventually, the door re-opened in a silent gust of steam and fragrance, John felt his heart jump into his throat—it was Sherlock, or near enough to Sherlock, a Sherlock that was a few pieces away from removing his disguise.

 

“You’re alive,” John said, shocked that he sounded so shocked.

 

Sherlock raised an eyebrow and rubbed at his mop of wet hair with a towel.  “I thought we established that, John,” he replied, and John knew it was Sherlock for sure.  Sherlock glanced down a bit sheepishly and gestured at the bathrobe he was wearing, which was comically short on him—up to his elbow in the sleeve, dangerously high on the thigh.  “Sorry about...well, my clothes really _are_ filthy.  I’ll wash them later.”

 

John smiled and wanted to laugh, but didn’t.  Instead he got up from the chair and twirled the scissors on one finger.  “It’s fine.  You ready?”

 

Sherlock looked at him.  He placed the towel back around his shoulders and eyed John, the chair, and at last the scissors.  He walked over to the chair and threw himself into it.

 

John stepped around to the chair’s back and started by lightly threading his fingers through the kinked strands, combing them out.  The shower’s steam had coiled them anew, and they’d be wet for a long while, holding in all that moisture and the bland scent of John’s shampoo.  John’s fingertips bumped into Sherlock’s scalp, where they encountered rough, crusted edges.  John frowned.

 

“Why do you have scabs here?” he asked.

 

Sherlock sighed and shook his head.

 

John sighed in return and fetched a fine-toothed comb from the bath, bringing it back and carefully, slowly, dragging it through small sections of Sherlock’s hair, picking out bits of dead skin and clotted blood, gently avoiding some of the cuts and scabs that still looked new.  Sherlock leaned his head back into John’s fingers and fluttered his eyes shut in pleasure.

 

John combed.  First with the teeth of the comb, then back again with his fingers.  He slowly tilted Sherlock’s head forward, groomed some more at the back of his neck, then tilted it backwards until Sherlock’s skull rested on the chair.  John could see the freshly smooth skin of Sherlock’s jaw, the chapped lines of his lips, the return of warm colour to his cheeks.  

 

Sherlock cracked an eye open when John paused.  He smiled and shut the eye again.  Sherlock rumbled, “I don’t think I can move.”

 

John glanced down the rest of Sherlock’s body, where his arms were hanging loosely at his sides and his long, pale, muscled legs were stretched as far as they could go across the papered floor.  The bathrobe, though trying its best, still revealed a long vee of his chest, which had a few nicks and scrapes nestled underneath a light coating of chest hair.

 

John dropped the comb to the floor and retrieved the scissors from his back pocket.

 

Ensnaring a long section of fringe between his index and middle fingers, he stretched the hair taut, then snipped.  The wet strands tumbled to the ground, bouncing off Sherlock’s cheekbones on the way down.  Sherlock, his eyes still closed, hummed.  John caught another piece of fringe, and did it again.

 

He repeated the process of snare, stretch, clip, and release well over a dozen times, tilting Sherlock’s head forward and back, side to side, before Sherlock spoke again.

 

“I was moving for so long,” Sherlock groaned softly.  “There was never time.  To rest.  To still.”

 

John stopped, releasing his hold on one of the long curls and letting it fall back into the nest.  He carefully stepped across the littered newspaper to the front of the chair, observing his handiwork.  John was no hairdresser.  It was nowhere close to how it should be—sculpted to devastating artlessness—but rather as though someone had tried to hack through jungle vines.  But at least it was shorter, resting jaggedly around Sherlock’s ears, no longer in his eyes.

 

Sherlock lifted his head from the chair, his eyes wide open.  He reached for John’s wrist and held it in a desperate grip.  “But I can rest here, John,” he said, almost like a question.

 

John licked his lips.  “Yes,” he said, hushed.

 

Sherlock tugged sharply, pulling John into his lap.  John felt the cold press of Sherlock’s lips against his own and for a moment was instantly relieved—it made sense, it made perfect sense that his lips were cold, because this was _Sherlock._   And when Sherlock pushed a mint-flavoured tongue against his mouth, that also made sense—of course Sherlock had the foresight to borrow John’s mouthwash in anticipation of this moment, because manipulating outcomes in his favour was what Sherlock _did_.  John kissed him back, dropping the scissors to the floor.

 

Sherlock was moaning into his mouth, a sound half-anguished.  One of his hands grasped the back of John’s neck to hold him in place, as though afraid John would pull away.  John copied him, his fingers once again burying into the wet mass of hair.  John could smell his soap on Sherlock’s skin, feel the soft terrycloth of his bathrobe on Sherlock’s shoulders.  He pushed the cloth away and ran his free hand over the scrubbed surface of Sherlock’s chest, fingertips catching on the raised bumps of old and new scars peppered across his torso.  His thumb contemplated the rise of a nipple before sinking to the quivering plane of muscles in Sherlock’s abdomen.  Sherlock gasped, breaking contact with John’s mouth.

 

John’s breath hitched when he opened his eyes—the molten intensity of Sherlock’s gaze threw him off guard.  “Sherlock?” he gasped.

 

Sherlock’s face split into a wide, beaming grin, his eyes moist.  “John,” he said, his voice thick.  “You’ve said my name.”

 

And John felt a sickening twist in his heart, as though Sherlock had reached in and grabbed the heaving muscle, piercing it with the uneven edge of his fingernails.  “Sherlock,” John choked out, trying to strangle back the threat of tears.

 

Sherlock surged forward, kissing down a sob that had risen in John’s throat, his hands clutching and scrabbling at John’s back, trying to pull him even closer.  John felt the hot, hard nudge of Sherlock’s cock pressing against the crotch of his jeans, and his hips juddered forward.  Sherlock moaned loudly.

 

Sherlock’s hands slid from John’s shoulders to the front of his jeans, where he pulled open the zip.  As Sherlock stuffed a hand in, John made a half-hearted noise of protest that quickly dissolved into a throaty groan.  His head dropped to Sherlock’s shoulder, and he grabbed onto a post on the chair’s backrest, feeling faint, his vision dipping in and out of clarity.  Sherlock squeezed and rubbed at John’s cock, pulling it out of his underwear and starting to pump in earnest.

 

John, clinging to his stalwart sense of propriety, managed to have enough sense in him to reach a hand for Sherlock’s erection, rub a thumb at the slick head, smear his palm with precome and pull downwards, then up, again and again.  He lifted his head and pressed his nose into Sherlock’s damp hair, panting in the shared smell of sweat from their bodies and John’s shampoo.  Sherlock’s body heaved beneath him, and John felt the pulse of Sherlock’s cock in his hand as he came with a shout, coating John’s fingers and shirt with fluid.

 

All at once, Sherlock seemed to collapse, the tension in his muscles melting away as his hand dropped from John’s cock.  His face fell against John’s cheek; John, startled, pulled back to see that Sherlock had fallen into a dead sleep, his head lolling to the side as his body slumped in the chair.

 

John, aching for release, burst into a hysterical giggle.  Because of course.  Of course this would happen.  This was Sherlock.  He dipped a hand into the come on Sherlock’s stomach, wrapped it around his own cock, and brought himself to a shuddering finish, spilling semen across Sherlock’s naked thighs.

 

Sherlock let out a soft snore, oblivious.

 

John shakily got to his feet and went to wash his hands in the sink.  When he came back, Sherlock’s head had drifted even more to the side, so that the curls John had tried so hard to tame fell back over his eyes.

 

John was consumed by a sudden, overwhelming hatred for that hair.

 

He stormed over to the fallen pair of scissors and went back to work, not even trying to make it neat this time, just wanting to make it _short_.  Short enough that it would never hide anything of Sherlock again—his eyes, his face, his injuries, _nothing_.  He hacked and cut and sheared away every lock that got on his nerves, just for being in the way, for not falling the way it should.  When he was done, John pulled back and saw what he had shaped.

 

It was far too short.  Sherlock didn’t even have a fringe anymore.  His ears were bare and unprotected.  His forehead seemed almost too big.  Spread out naked on John’s dining chair with the borrowed bathrobe left open, Sherlock looked innocent—his head shorn, white semen smeared across his skin, his expression free and relaxed.  Drool was gathering at the edge of his mouth.

 

John felt that tight, painful squeeze in his chest from before, and he carefully placed the scissors on a table.  For a moment, he just watched Sherlock sleep.

 

He desperately wanted to be angry—he _was_ angry, he was so angry he wanted to scream and bash the git’s face a few times, but he also wanted to let him be, to let Sherlock rest out his bone-deep exhaustion and recover himself.  Because this wasn’t Sherlock, not entirely, not yet, and right now John couldn’t handle Sherlock when he came back fully to himself, to that logical costume he lived and slept in.

 

He started to pick up pieces of newspaper around the chair and dump piles of curls into the rubbish bin.  He did this piece by piece, abandoning the pages still trapped under the chair’s legs.  He scooped up a stray curl here and there when it escaped the Sports and Entertainment sections.  Once he finished, he took one last, lingering look at the man sleeping soundly in the chair, and he left.

 

John walked with purpose, but in no particular direction.

 

He needed to make Sherlock understand.  Before they could talk, or argue, or throw punches, he needed Sherlock to understand what it was like, to wake up not knowing if the man you loved would ever come back.  To believe, even for a second, that he never would.

 

But more importantly, _John_ needed to understand.  He needed to walk at least a dozen of those miles in Sherlock’s shoes, to not know where he should go to evade his pursuers—not that the pursuit would last long.  Sherlock would find him.  Sherlock could and would always find him.  But before he was found, John needed to know what it was like, to hurt the man you loved—simply by walking away.

**Author's Note:**

> And this is why none of you should listen to opera and/or be inspired by Biblical narratives before writing fanfiction. It turns into the most melodramatic, angsty thing you've ever written. Learn from my example, padawans.
> 
> Oh and because of Reasons I'm putting the lines I got the title from down here instead of at the top for some reason:
> 
> "Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail  
> Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,  
> Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair,  
> And what may quiet us in a death so noble."
> 
> \--lines 1721-1724 of John Milton's _Samson Agonistes_ (1671)


End file.
